Tuesday, 15 September 2015

Regardless of where you stand on Corbyn, this is an utterly vile statement by Cameron, more worthy of Farage (or le Pen, or Putin) than the leader of a democracy. The PM has just used the exact same language to describe Labour as he does ISIS and al Qaeda. So the official political opposition to the government is now a "national security threat"? And what do we do with "national security threats" these days? We strip them of rights, treat them as enemies and terrorists. Is the PM saying that Labour -- and anyone who supports it -- is now a terrorist? Will he send Teresa May with flying squads to raid Labour meetings at the local church hall?
No, of course not. He is simply — and quite deliberately — using Faragian rhetoric to further poison the political culture, to sow division, hatred and fear among the electorate. Like the Tea Party in America, his Tories have nothing to offer but fear and demonization of all those who disagree with them or present the slightest alternative to their extremist cult of austerity and neoliberalism.
But oh, what a grand and noble figure the PM cuts, thundering down from his bully pulpit! Look at him there, with his well-tailored suit, his well-fed frame, his well-tanned face, as he denounces the mortal danger of opposing his enlightened rule and his holy cult. A man who sells arms in crooked deals to the misogynist, head-chopping religious extremists in Saudi Arabia. A man who sells arms to militant factions who force children into battle. A man who turned Libya into a terrorist-spawning chaos and did nothing to help restore it, who supports “moderate” Islamic extremists to keep the civil war churning in Syria, a man who sells off whole chunks of the nation’s security infrastructure to foreign powers … THIS is the man who denounces his opponents as a “national security threat.”
I knew the Tories and their string-pullers in the oh-so-patriotic right-wing media (a gaggle of non-doms, foreigners, porn merchants and tax-dodgers) would strike hard and low — no matter WHO Labour picked as leader. (Yes, we would have been seeing “Red Liz” or “Commie Cooper” or “Andy Anarchy in the UK” headlines this morning if the vote had gone another way. Don’t kid yourself.) But to see them go so low so quickly — with the Prime Minister himself regurgitating hysterical Tea Party bile in such a bald-faced fashion — is stunning.
I’ll say it again: this is vile. This goes beyond the rough-and-tumble of hardball partisan politics into the realm of hate speech and provocation. (If Corbyn is a “national security threat” — just like ISIS — shouldn’t he be “taken out”? If he — or the Labour Party in general — is a “threat to your family’s security,” shouldn’t some stalwart dad out there do “whatever it takes” to protect his little ones from this imminent danger? These are the sinister notions Cameron is feeding into the national psyche.)
Cameron — like Trump, whose followers are now beating up people who look like immigrants — is playing with fire here. And he knows it. And he doesn’t care. This message is a vile, shameful, morally putrid piece of filthChris Floyd